


Crawl Out Through the Fallout

by PercyByssheShelley



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Biting, M/M, Non-canon vault, Past Clint/Preston, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Vault-Tec's questionable experiment design
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 14:06:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12037464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PercyByssheShelley/pseuds/PercyByssheShelley
Summary: Preston and Danse team up to find the missing Sole Survivor and find themselves reliving the worst day of Preston's life. Again and again and again.





	Crawl Out Through the Fallout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starlatine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlatine/gifts).



Preston gripped the neck of his beer bottle loosely, the pads of his fingers still stinging from a full day harvesting corn with the settlers. Work was still ongoing- looking down over the wall he could see the bent heads of the workers bobbing in and out of the pools of light thrown by the halogens. A growing settlement meant a growing need for food, and so they'd planted corn in volumes that he now worried they didn't have the manpower to harvest.

If he had his choice he would be down there with the night shift, but at sun down Sturges had grabbed him by the shoulders and frog marched him up the stairs to the ramshackle bar the General had built on a parapet.

"Stop," Sturges had told him sternly. "Order some garbage food. Have a drink. Then _sleep._ If you collapse out there because you tried to pick vegetables for eighteen hours straight then Cait is going to make me help you, and I'm not throwing my back out carrying you to your quarters."

And so even if guilt chewed at him to see others working on while his rear was planted in a chair, Preston had stopped.

He'd thought the General was mad when she announced that her first priority was setting up a bar with ocean views. She'd shrugged off his objections- jutting into the ocean the way it did, the location was useless as a sniper nest, and anything more than the single turret behind the bar was overkill, given the rest of the Castle's security features.

He suspected part of the motivation was to create a role for the bartender, Cait, who poured drinks with a practiced hand and spat poison at anyone who hinted at wanting her to sell them anything stronger than a double whiskey. The General had arrived with Cait in tow a few weeks earlier,  breezily announcing that Cait was going to help Preston. Preston had taken it for charity at first- Cait was twitchy and strung out, with a tendency to turn her gaze inwards and disappear for several moments, in the way that people did when a memory grasped them by the throat.

Preston wondered if he looked that way too, sometimes.

But a few weeks of solid sleep and three meals a day had helped Cait bounce back from whatever it was that had made her look like she'd gone ten rounds with a deathclaw, and now he couldn't imagine the Castle without her sly jokes and rolling eyes.

"Garvey." Cait stood beside his table, holding a second beer that he hadn't ordered.

He nodded to the chair opposite him. He was wary of Cait, since he suspected that very few of the amoral jokes she made were actually jokes, but the General trusted her.

"I don't know if you've been keeping track of how long it's been since we've heard from Nora," she started, sitting in the chair.

"Seventeen days," he said. He didn't know whether to be relieved or more worried that someone else had noticed it too. Not wanting your anxieties to be irrational was one of life's delightful lose-lose propositions.

"...Yes," Cait said. "Now, I dunno how often she checks in with you, and I'm sure not her mother, but I can't help noticing that the radio's gone quiet about her too."

He nodded. It was normal for her to go weeks at a time without returning to the Castle, but he could always keep tabs on her through the gossip that made its way to Travis. Nothing he'd shared recently sounded like it had her fingerprints on it.

The General was gone.

...

Preston spread out the map of the Commonwealth on the cracked surface of the conference table. The last time he'd seen it had been with the General seated opposite him, her pencil squeaking across the paper as she noted the locations of allies he could call on in an emergency.

"Now in Goodneighbor there's Hancock and MacCready," she'd said, swooping a circle around the city. "And Strong is not far from there." She circled a tower a few blocks from Goodneighbor.

Clearly calling on the supermutant was right out. Hancock and MacCready might be viable options, at the very least they were loyal to the General, but they weren't the sort of people easily swayed by Preston's way of arguing. And Goodneighbor was a dangerous trip alone.

"Nick Valentine and Piper in Diamond City."

Now that would be a great option. The three of them would make a perfect team, solid and dependable fighters of the good fight. If Diamond City wasn't halfway across the Commonwealth.

"Deacon." She'd paused, pencil hovering above the paper. He'd felt a twist of hurt in his stomach that she would hesitate before sharing the location with him. "Well, if Deacon is willing to help he'll find you."

He couldn't help but think, surveying the map, that it showed how the General treated the Commonwealth as a buffet, sampling factions and moral codes and taking only what she liked. It worried him sometimes, that someone with so much power could have a moral code rooted in momentary whims, but it wasn't enough to make him flinch in his loyalty to her.

"And of course, Paladin Danse," she'd said, circling a spot on the map only a stone's throw from where they sat.

...

The General's name was the password to many doors in the Commonwealth. It was enough to let Preston defy gravity, buy him a seat on the vertibird that ferries visitors to the Prydwen, but not enough to actually get inside.

A man was waiting for him on the flight deck, sun gleaming off the patina of his power armour. He looked like a recruitment poster come to life, all devastating weaponry and chiselled features, standing on a windswept deck. It was the sort of image that would have turned a much younger Preston's head.

The older and wiser Preston wasn't impressed, but the General spoke of Danse with respect, and that was good enough for him.

"You're looking for Nora," Danse said, his voice clipped. "She's on a mission for us."

Preston sagged back against the metal backrest in relief. "Good to hear. She told us to expect her back in a few days."

"She's been incommunicado with you too?" Danse asked, and the relief evaporated. "I did expect her to be back with the biometric scanner much more quickly than this." He turned and stared out at the Commonwealth, and Preston was willing to bet Danse saw the same thing in it that he did- a million possible ways for one soldier to disappear.

"She told us she had a solid lead on a Vault to the North. It had a medical focus, probably packed with equipment."

"A Vault Tec facility," Danse said. He rubbed a hand over his chin, now looking genuinely worried. He put a hand to his ear and muttered something into his radio. Preston's seat began to rumble as the rotors of the vertibird roared back to life. "Move over," Danse shouted, and jumped aboard with surprising grace for a two legged tank.

The sensation was like nothing Preston had ever experienced before as the vertibird swung away from the flight deck. The hop to the Prydwen had been little more than a glorified elevator ride, but this was incredible. The ruins of Boston rolled out beneath them like a patchwork quilt, and for the first time ever the Commonwealth made sense, the individual settlements and landmarks and wayside stops that he knew linking up into a coherent whole.

He looked at Danse, expecting to find mockery for his starry eyed reaction, but the soldier's face had split into an unabashed grin. "I know," he yelled over the roar of the engine. "I know."

...

The vertibird circled low over Parsons State Asylum, and landed in a field just north of the hospital.

“Given the proximity to the psychiatric facility, and it's reputation for being a source of medical equipment, I'd hazard a guess this vault was used to evacuate the patients from Parsons State,” Danse said, as they made their way into the vault.

“Would Vault-tec have provided a space for those patients?” Garvey asked.

“Vault-tec had space for whoever they thought they needed,” Danse replied.

At the sound of their footsteps clanging across the metal bridge, a Nurse Handy bot floated out of the shadows.

"Welcome to Vault 122," she said in a voice like honey. "Please put on your vault suit and Vault-Tec headset."

Danse surveyed the room. Corners were clear, no signs of life beyond himself, Garvey and the bot. Behind her was a wall of solid steel, with no handles or locking mechanisms. He couldn't see any sign of an interface or manual override.

"Welcome to Vault 122," the bot repeated. "Please put on your vault suit and Vault-Tec headset."

Garvey shucked off his duster and started to toe out of his boots. Danse side eyed him but said nothing, continuing to search for a way through to the Vault proper.

"Welcome to Vault 122." The bot sounded unruffled. "Please put on your vault suit and Vault-Tec headset."

Garvey unbuttoned his shirt, revealing an impressive chest and upper arms. The minutemen's training routine was clearly rigorous, even if it was nothing on the physical discipline of the Brotherhood.

"Can I help you?" Preston asked, raising an eyebrow when he realised Danse's eyes were on him.

"I'm just wondering why you're so quick to follow this thing's orders," Danse said smoothly. It wasn't an entirely truthful explanation, but it would do. "Whatever's behind that door trapped one of the most formidable fighters in the Commonwealth, do you really want to rush into the same trap?"

"You're welcome to try to get the door open without the bot's cooperation," Garvey replied. He swiped a Vault suit off a stack on the floor and jammed one leg then the other inside.

Danse pressed the metal gloves of his power armor to the steel wall. He found no hint of weakness, no spots that gave when pushed. He slapped it with his open palm and the noise it made was deep but brief- no reverberations that implied a hollow center. The door was solid, probably five feet thick at least.

He dug his fingers in, leaning all his weight against it to try to get purchase, and then tried to drag the door to the side. The servoes in his suit hummed with the effort, but the door was immoveable.

"Welcome to Vault 122," the bot repeated. "Please put on your vault suit and Vault-Tec headset."

"I'll make you a deal," Garvey said. He was fully dressed by this point, the headset gripped in his hands. It looked like a little girl's headband- a curve of thin silver, with a leaf shaped spot made out of hammered metal that would rest next to the wearer's eye when it was on. "I'll wear the headset. I'll shoulder the risk. Maybe that will satisfy the bot, and you can ghost in after me."

That didn't sit right with Danse- he was used to being the one who took the calculated risk, who volunteered for the sacrifice. But he didn't have any scope to tell Garvey no, when he'd been the one arguing against putting the headset on.

Garvey slipped the thing over his head. As soon as he withdrew his hands, the unit molded itself to the shape of his skull with a pneumatic hiss. The leaf shape slammed against his temple, and he let out a brief bark of surprise.

"Thank you," the Nurse Handy purred. "Please proceed down the corridor for room assignments."

A klaxon sounded deep inside the vault, and the wall slid aside. Danse slipped in, so close to Garvey's back that he was nearly bumping against him. He held his laser rifle at the ready, expecting the Nurse Handy to react with hostility to his sneaking in, but she silently drifted back to her station and the wall slid closed behind them.

They were in.

 

Vaults may have been monstrosities, but they were also treasure troves of experimental tech and untouched systems, so Danse had cleared out more than he could remember. They were always mazes, but mazes with an internal logic- entrances, security rooms, dormitories, dining areas and reactors. Vault 122 threw all of that out the window.

They made their way down a long, narrow hallway, broken up every few feet by a doorway. Most lead to a small living area. Some had a single bed, others small clusters of easy chairs. Most held the skeletonized remains of dwellers in rotting vault suits. Every time, the beam of Danse's flashlight gleamed off a silver headset resting on the skull.

Every third door, like clockwork, lead to a kitchenette, each with an Eat-o-Tronic stuffed with Cram, Sugar Bombs and Fancy Lads.

"Have you noticed something?" Garvey asked, voice pitched low. They hadn't encountered anything worse than the odd radroach, but it still wasn't a good strategy to make too much noise.

"Maybe," Danse replied. "You want to tell me what you're thinking?"

"Everyone gets a headset on arrival. And every corpse is wearing one. But." Garvey pointed into a corner. Danse turned to look, bringing the beam of the flashlight sweeping across the floor with his gaze, and it reflected off the silver leaf of a discarded headset. "Once you start to look for them, they're everywhere."

It was like a magic trick. Once Garvey had pointed it out, Danse spotted half a dozen of the headsets lying on the floor, or hanging from the light fittings, or jumbled into milk crates.

"No remains without headsets, but plenty of headsets without remains," Danse said, impressed. "Good observation. But does it mean anything? Maybe the Vault had spares."

"We'll know if we come across a store room," Garvey said.

Chimes sounded overhead, a three note scale. "Morning," the voice of a Nurse Handy intoned over the intercom.

"Wake up call?" Garvey joked. "It's nearly ten, I guess they liked to sleep innnnnnnnnnnn-"

Garvey's eyes rolled back in his head. Back in Rivet City, Danse had once had the bad luck of seeing someone get 'mezzed'- hit with a weapon that switched off higher brain function. Garvey looked exactly like he had gotten mezzed. His knees buckled and he collapsed forward. Danse swung one arm around his waist, crushing his unresponsive body against his chest to save him from cracking his head open on the metal wall of the vault.

(There was a lot of bad luck going around that day. The victim for getting mezzed, Danse for witnessing it, and the attacker for doing it with Danse as a witness.)

Distantly Danse heard the hum of his power armor as it automatically kept him upright, even as whatever was affecting Garvey dragged him down into the blackness.

...

Preston blinked and raised a hand. The early morning sun streaming in through a bombed out wall was a shock after the insipid artificial light of the vault.

Danse had his arm around his waist, the touch surprisingly gentle considering that it was backed by machinery that could punch through a concrete wall. After a moment he seemed satisfied that Preston was steady on his feet, and withdrew his support.

"Where are we?" Danse asked, checking all four corners of the room, the way he always did.

"I don't know," Preston lied.

Or was it a lie? He knew exactly where this room was- he'd spent enough hours of his life in it, both in real life and frequent, involuntary trips back in dreams and unwanted memories.

But since it was impossible for them to have been inside Vault 122 one minute, and standing in a bedroom in Quincy the next, it was true that he had no idea where they were.

Danse shot him a sideways look, his mouth pressed into a thin line that made it clear he had picked up on Preston's hesitation.

The door swung open, and immediately every muscle in Preston's body tensed. A second Preston walked in, a khaki duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a laser musket cradled in the crook of his elbow.

"What the actual..." Danse muttered.

The other Preston didn't react to their presence. He tossed the bag at the foot of the bed and knelt down to begin unlacing his boots. For his nap, Preston remembered, a queasy feeling rising in his stomach. They'd set a group of settlers to take first watch. Sturges had taken Hollis to a spot on the roof that had the best radio reception, to keep trying to hail the other Minutemen. And Preston had headed to a spare bedroom to get some sleep before the fight began.

But not alone.

"I'm sorry," real Preston said. Danse turned to him, his brow creased in confusion. "This isn't the memory I would have chosen."

The door creaked open again, and Clint strode in. "Room with a view," he joked, jerking his chin at the gaping hole in the wall.

"At least it's not going to rain," memory Preston said. "I like the visibility."

"Hey," Clint said. "Sheets on the bed."

Sheets were a rare luxury. That much fabric usually got snapped up by scavengers, used to patch holes in walls or cut up for clothing.

"Oh yeah," memory Preston hummed, dropping heavily on the edge of the bed and then falling backward.

"Can we leave?" real Preston asked urgently. "I think we should leave. Now."

Danse clanked over to the door. Memory Clint paid him no mind, joining the Preston on the bed and testing the mattress with a playful bounce.

Danse swung the door open to reveal that beyond the door, Quincy faded away to a dark blue void shot through with sparkling colored swirls.

"Must be a similar technology to what they use in the Memory Den," Preston said.

Behind them the click of a belt buckle opening rang out, deafeningly loud in Preston’s ears. “I'm sorry,” he said again.

This scene had played in his mind again and again. He didn't need to turn around, he only had to close his eyes to see Clint leaning over him, his eyes half lidded in faked nonchalance, every line on his face betraying that he was actually anxious as hell about the looming battle and trying to distract himself. Preston had been happy to be that distraction, but he hadn't known how deep Clint's worries ran.

"Garvey, I've spent more than half my life living in dormitories," Danse said. "This is not the first time I've pretended I can't hear a guy getting a blowjob."

Memory Preston's breath caught in his throat. Preston snuck a glance sideways and saw his own hand fisting the sheets, fingers digging into the mattress.

"If anything, you're the one getting his privacy invaded," Danse said softly. "This is a pretty intimate memory."

"It's not intimate," Preston said shortly. "You're not witnessing a tale of tragic lost love. We're helping each other out. Soldiers do that."

"I'm aware of that," Danse said wryly.

As if proving his point, the Preston on the bed let out a choked cry, followed by a muffled laugh from Clint. Fast and dirty, over in less than three minutes. Just a guy helping another guy sand the edge off before a tough battle.

Preston murmured something to Clint- it was too quiet for the real Preston to catch, but his tone was softer and gentler than he wanted to remember it being.

"I'm good," Clint said, his boots thumping against the floor as he stood up again. "You know I fight better wound up."

"That's your call. You should try to grab some sleep while we've got the chance, though."

Danse's head bobbed once in an approving nod. Preston suppressed a laugh because he'd wanted to do the same thing. Some habits become ingrained once you've been a leader for a while, and acknowledging a sensible suggestion was one of them. It felt odd to admit it, when they could so easily end up at opposite ends of a gun one day, but he and Danse were quite similar.

"How long have we got before we're expecting the reinforcements?" Clint asked.

"Depends where they're coming from," Preston replied. He rolled over and wrapped one arm around the straw pillow, tucking his head against his shoulder.

"What do you mean? How do we not know?"

"Where were you this morning? Hollis is still confirming who will back us up. He's on the radio right now."

Preston wanted to scream at his past self to stop acting so unconcerned. He hadn't been calm. He'd been freaking out internally, and acting calm to try to soothe Clint. He thought that would help, he hadn't realised he was coming across like an idiot with no idea how much danger they were in.

"Preston," Clint said urgently. "Preston, you've got to be fucking kidding me. There are no reinforcements coming?"

"Of course the reinforcements are coming," Preston mumbled into the pillow. "You've got to trust Hollis."

"We're going to die here."

That was it, Preston realized. That was the moment Clint decided. And his past self was just lying on the bed, already half asleep. Letting it happen.

"Clint," Preston admonished. "They're coming."

He had believed it at the time. He'd believed Hollis more than he'd believed Clint, anyway.

"I can't sleep," Clint snapped. "I'll go relieve one of the townies on watch."

...

The return to consciousness was more gentle than going under had been. Danse blinked, and was back in the metal corridor of Vault 122, still holding Garvey up by the elbows. He was grateful for the the internal balancing mechanisms of the power armour that kept him on his feet no matter what, or else the both of them would be a pile of bruises on the floor.

Garvey's face was a picture of misery. Danse had no context for what he'd seen, beyond a hurried sexual encounter and a tense conversation. He'd been in enough battles in his life to have had plenty of similar encounters and similar conversations, but clearly this one in particular had cut Garvey to the bone.

"Food," Danse said firmly. He slammed his fist on the button to open the nearest door, one that would lead to a kitchenette if he was right about the pattern.

He deposited Garvey into a chair in the corner and rummaged through the Eat-o-Tronic. It was good to get food into people as quickly as possible after a miserable experience, he'd found. It gave them something to do with their hands and mouth, and something to focus on, in addition to any benefits from the food itself. Which, Danse had to admit, might be minimal. The closest he could find to actual food was a dusty boxed Salisbury Steak, and he would bet any actual nutrients had disappeared centuries ago, leaving only preservatives and beef flavouring.

Garvey accepted it gratefully, though.

"How much do you know about vaults?" Danse asked, weighing up a box of snack cakes in one hand and Instamash in the other, trying to decide if it was worth the risk.

Garvey shrugged, and swallowed his mouthful of steak. "They're solid, defensible settlements if you have the manpower to hold one, but most of them are occupied by Gunners and raiders. Some are uninhabitable. You hear some crazy stories out there. Toxic gases, weird monsters in the reactor room, cruel booby traps."

"They're all cruel booby traps," Danse said. "Every one of them."

Screw it. He ripped open the box of snack cakes and shoved one in his mouth.

He'd seen enough in his time to know that they were almost certainly caught up in one of Vault-Tec's little games. He had his suspicions about what that game was, but needed to gather more evidence. "We should keep moving," he said. "The sooner we find Nora, and make our way back to the surface, the better off everyone will be."

"Sounds like a plan to me." Garvey shoveled the last scoop of steak into his mouth, and tossed the carton into the trashcan. Danse suppressed a laugh- there was no one to empty the trash, and probably no living human would ever enter this room again after they left, but Garvey wasn't the kind of guy that left his trash around for someone else to worry about.

Overhead the intercom crackled, and Danse tensed. The three notes sounded, followed by the voice of the bot. "Midday."

At least Garvey was sitting down this time. Danse reached out and grabbed his arm.

 

...

A bullet whizzed over their heads and slammed into the wall behind them, sending sprays of plaster and ancient dust scattering through the air. Danse dropped into a combat stance, bringing his laser rifle up to shoulder height.

It was interesting, Preston thought, that the headset brought their weapons and armour into the memory with them. Was that part of the programming, or was Danse's kit so deeply ingrained in his sense of self that he couldn't imagine himself any differently?

Preston put a hand to his shoulder, confirming that his musket was strapped to his back. He hadn't been wearing it like that in the kitchenette- it had been on the floor by his feet- so that was one chalk mark in the 'self image' column.

He scanned the scene, looking for his past self. Memory Preston was on a balcony, back to back with Sturges, shouting something that disappeared in the distance between them.

Apparently this memory was going to replay at a distance. Preston was grateful after the painful immediacy of the last one, when every sound, every smell, every shift of the light had felt amplified, but the trade off was that he could see everything from this vantage point.

Down below a shell exploded and a settler screamed, hands scrabbling at a white t-shirt that was covered in tiny spots of red that grew and grew. He collapsed, falling into a gap between an overturned post box and a pile of rubble, where he probably still was to this day.

Preston didn't know his name. He'd asked Sturges once, on one of those nights when sleep had seemed impossible and all he could do was sit awake prodding at old wounds, for a list of the people lost in the Quincy Massacre. Sturges had clapped an enormous hand on Preston's shoulder and said, "forget the names. That's our weight to carry."

His stomach turned over as he caught his first glimpse of Clint at the mouth of an alley way, flanked by his new Gunner comrades. It wasn't the same gut punching shock that he'd experienced that day, since Clint's betrayal was no longer a surprise, but it was still an unpleasant sight.

It reminded him of the feeling of changing the dressing on a gruesome wound. Knowing that it was going to be unpleasant didn't make the moment of seeing it again any less revolting.

The Preston on the balcony hadn't seen Clint yet. The gut punch moment was still in his future.

Beside him, Danse was scanning the battlefield. Preston knew that he was taking an accurate measure of what was going on below- the scant handful of Minutemen, the disorganized defense by the settlers with an eclectic collection of scavenged weaponry, and the overwhelming, organised waves of Gunners.

He didn't think Danse had seen Clint yet.

He didn't know whose face would be worse to watch during the moment of realisation. He could look at himself, see his world collapse from the outside. Or he could look at Danse and see what? Disgust at his gullibility? Or worse, pity.

He looked at the sky instead.

...

Danse smacked the Nuka Cola against the countertop, sending the bottle cap whizzing up into the air. It clattered to the floor somewhere. There was a time in his life when he would have gone crawling into every dusty corner looking for a single cap, but he let this one go. He was more focused on getting the drink into Garvey's hands.

Garvey took the drink with a whispered thanks, and tipped his head back. Danse watched his throat move as he drained the bottle without stopping, desperately sucking down the syrupy contents.

"What would you have chosen?" Danse asked, taking another bottle for himself and popping the cap.

"I'm sorry?"

"This morning, you said that this isn't the memory you would have chosen. What would you have chosen?"

Garvey rubbed his thumb over the neck of the bottle, and smiled. Danse expected him to come out with a sex story. Most men did, when faced with a question like that. Not about Clint, who was clearly a fucker and a half, but about some corn fed girl or boy Garvey had fucked in a barn in the settlement he grew up in, or some wildcat he picked up in a bar.

"I'd go back to the moment we retook the Castle," Garvey said, to Danse's surprise. "Did the General ever tell you about it?"

"No," Danse said. Nora didn't talk much about what she'd fought out in the Commonwealth. When pressed she mostly fell back on spinning elaborate tales of fighting off battalions of killer attack hamsters.

"You know that moment when you fire a shot in the middle of a desperate battle and you know, you just know, that that was the shot? When everything slows down and that bullet just _sings_ through the air. I fired that shot the day we retook the Castle. I'll never forget the way the earth shook beneath my boots when the Mirelurk Queen fell. If I could choose, I'd relive that memory again and again."

"A Mirelurk Queen," Danse echoed, impressed despite himself. He had to admit, if he thought anything at all about the Minutemen, it was as a failed idea. They had some good ideas- some irresponsible ideas, maybe, since they took no steps to regulate the use of prewar technology in their settlements- but they had no strength to back those ideas up. They mostly took their good ideas to shallow graves.

He'd known that they were doing better with Nora's backing, but he'd had no idea how much better. A Mirelurk Queen.

"That was the moment it all turned around," Garvey said. "Until then, the Minutemen had been chipped away piece by piece until I was the only piece left. But once we had the Castle back, we had space to build on. And so we have. The Minutemen were growing." His face grew somber again, his thumb chasing a drop of condensation on the bottle neck. "So basically the memories I saw today are the exact opposite of the one I would choose."

"I've never fought a Mirelurk Queen," Danse said. He wasn't usually one to jump into a conversation with his own stories, but he could tell when a particular conversation was sprinting into dangerous territory. "But I'd have chosen a battle story too."

"Oh?" Garvey looked up at him, eyebrows raised in genuine interest.

"Not even a battle I was in," Danse admitted. "When I was a kid living in a place out East called Rivet City- have you heard of it?"

"Out in Washington," Garvey said. "It's mentioned a couple of times in the Wasteland Survival Guide."

"Ugh, that rubbish," Danse said. "But yes, in Washington. I-" he stopped just before saying 'grew up there', because it was only joining the Brotherhood that let him grow up. He'd survived childhood there. "I lived there as a kid with a friend. One night the whole ship started shaking- boom, crash. We all rushed to the decks, thinking it was a sabotage attack- someone setting off bombs on board. But it was from the artillery fire miles away at the Rotunda. The Brotherhood were fighting a group known as the Enclave. They got into skirmishes all the time, but this battle was different. The Brotherhood had activated a battle robot named Liberty Prime, and-"

Three chimes sounded. Danse looked up at the ceiling, wanting to scream curses at the crackling intercom.

"Afternoon."

...

Preston knew where the headset was going to take him, but that didn't make it any easier. He found himself walking beside himself, his shoulders stooped in exhaustion and his laser musket cradled in his arms like it was all he had left in the world. The light was dimming as the sun set, casting long shadows over the train of people. Mama Murphy behind him, muttering to herself. In the middle the Long family set the pace- Jun on one side, Marcy on the other and Kyle limping in between, his face a complete blank. The handful of nameless, lost settlers who had made it this far were scattered ahead and behind them. Sturges brought up the rear.

The dying light was a good thing. It would make it harder for raiders  to spot the convoy, and make it more difficult to line up a shot if they did. Preston had known that, intellectually. But he hadn't felt any relief. The ability to feel anything at all had been burned out of him.

Ahead of them loomed Lexington. Another relief that brought no relief. It would bring shelter, food, sleep. Maybe it would be the end of their journey, a new place to dig in and hold on for as long as they could.

Real Preston felt as burned out as the memory that walked beside him. He didn't turn around, as his past self did, to trace the path of the bullet that roared between them. He kept walking as the group dissolved into panic, and a single voice rose above the rest in a heart rending wail.

Danse appeared, popping into existence like a mole rat bursting from the earth. He cast a glance over the carnage behind them, and his face crumpled in empathy, but he turned his focus on Preston.

"I have to be touching you to join you in the memory," he said. "But it doesn't have to be when the warning sounds. I waited thirty seconds, touched your wrist, and it pulled me in."

"You don't have to join me at all," Preston said. "You could just leave me to it. Keep searching for the General."

"No," Danse said simply.

"To me!" Memory Preston shouted. "This way!"

"Kyle," Jun shouted. "We have to go back for Kyle."

"No we don't," Preston mouthed along with his previous self.

That was it. That was the moment he'd decided that he was finished. He would get as many of the survivors to some measure of safety as he could, and that was him done.

...

Danse checked the timepiece on his suit. The amount of time that had actually passed didn't marry up to the amount of time that he had felt passing in Garvey's relived memory. It was disorienting, but also a useful data point. The day had run to a set schedule- two hours in the memory, half an hour out, two hours in, half an hour out, two hours in. But the memories hadn't been two hour slices of Garvey's life- they'd been specific memories, taking as much or as little time as they needed.

Garvey looked like he had been shattered and put back together wrong. Danse was tired, but Garvey looked completely exhausted. Whatever workout the headset was putting his brain through was visibly sapping everything he had.

"Do you think there's an evening session?" Garvey asked, his voice sounding furry with fatigue.

Danse hoped not. It was entirely possible that the corpses of vault dwellers they had encountered lying on beds and couches had been there since only a few days after the bombs dropped, dead from exhaustion after being forced to keep going and going, with only half hour breaks to snatch food and sleep. Maybe that was the experiment, to see how long people could survive under those conditions.

But he doubted it.

The door hissed open, revealing a nightstand with a lamp on it and a single bed that was thankfully empty. Danse didn't know about Garvey, but he always slept poorly in beds he'd had to remove a skeleton from.

There were sheets on the bed, he noticed. It was darkly funny, in a way that he doubted Garvey would appreciate.

Garvey collapsed onto the bed, not bothering to strip back the bedding first. He shuffled over until his back was pressed against the wall, leaving a narrow strip of mattress free beside him.

Danse hesitated. He'd slept in his power armour before. It wasn't comfortable and didn't lead to particularly refreshing sleep, but then neither did trying to sleep in a strange, unsecured location with no armor on. But there was no way he could squeeze in beside Garvey wit.                       on.

"Danse," Garvey mumbled. "There's nothing here but us and the radroaches. Get in the bed."

Danse didn't say anything, but let the hiss of his armour releasing be answer enough. He left it standing in front of the closed door like a sentry.

Garvey was already asleep by the time Danse crossed the floor, his breath a steady rhythm. Danse didn't have exhaustion to carry him away so quickly, so he lay awake for a long time, trying to remember the last time he'd felt the warmth of another body pressed against his back.

...

Preston had nursed some killer hangovers in his life, both from hard battles and hard drinking. In some cases, such as the day after they retook the Castle, from both. This hangover felt nothing like either. His body felt, if anything, better than it usually did. He'd slept for nearly twelve hours, on a comfortable bed, and he always slept more deeply with someone beside him. His mind, on the other hand, felt like it had been chewed on by a rabid mole rat.

He pressed his fingertips to his temple and felt the headset, still clamped to his skin, the metal warmed to his body temperature. He traced the seam between his skin and the metal, trying to find any point that might be an off switch or reset button. It was smooth all the way around. He dug his thumb nail into the gap, trying to prise the damn thing off, but it was immovable.

Clearly he wasn't getting out of it until it was ready to let him go.

He found Danse in the kitchenette next door, already ensconced back in his power armor. He was bent over a frying pan that sizzled on top of a hotplate, humming 'Civilization' to himself.

"I can't handle another box of Salisbury Steak," Danse said, not turning around. "And a box of Sugar Bombs definitely isn't an option."

Preston glanced over his shoulder, to see two mounds of creamy almost-white potato swimming in a pool of cooking oil, their edges turning brown and crisp.

"Instamash," Danse explained, prodding them with a spatula. "I took the peas from a tv dinner and added some corn. It's nothing fancy, but at least it's not eaten straight from the box."

"Thank you," Preston said, meaning it. He sat down at the table to wait. He'd shared meals with fellow Minutemen, and eaten from the communal pot that was always bubbling over the fire at the Castle, but he couldn't remember the last time someone had cooked something specifically for him. It was far from a domestic scene, with Danse's armor taking up most of the room, but it still lit something warm deep inside him.

"Assuming that every day follows the same schedule as yesterday, the morning is our best opportunity to search for Nora," Danse said. "We can't risk trying to roam too far afield during the short breaks. If you're on the move when the session starts you could fall and injure yourself. Not to mention what would happen if you were in the middle of a fight."

Preston bristled at being treated like an invalid who needed protecting, but he couldn't actually fault Danse's logic.

The truth of it was hard to accept. If it would take them half a day to search a vault under normal circumstances, then once constrained to just a few hours each morning they could be looking at three, four days. Maybe even a week.

Which meant anywhere from nine to twenty one more 'sessions' with the headset. Preston stared down at the plate Danse laid in front of him, his appetite fading away.

Danse sat opposite him, and attacked his own plate with military efficiency. He leaned forward over the table, his shoulders hunched slightly in a posture that Preston recognised. It was subtle, and he'd be willing to place a bet that Danse had actively tried to shake the habit, but it was the clear body language of someone who had grown up never knowing when his meal might be snatched out from under him.

Danse caught his gaze and relaxed his shoulders, forcing them down to a more natural position. "The people of the Commonwealth don't realise how lucky they are when it comes to food. You eat like kings compared to the Capital Wastelanders."

"I find that hard to believe," Preston said. He'd seen settlers burst into tears of relief at being handed a bowl of unseasoned corn mash or the broth of a molerat soup.

"I'm serious," Danse said. "You have whole farms growing fresh vegetables. Back east most settlements are still living on cans hauled out of bomb shelters. Where I grew up, producing a fresh carrot was a major scientific endeavour. We went to war to get a water purifier up and running."

Preston shook his head. "I'm still getting used to how big the Commonwealth is," he said. "How many people there are out there in need of our help. The idea that there are other places in even more dire need..."

"They've got their own heroes," Danse said. "If you try to save the whole world you'll burn yourself away to nothing."

...

They walked for what felt like an eternity down the straight hallway. The floor was subtly tilted down- it wasn't noticeable at first, but they were going deeper and deeper underground as they moved through the vault. The layout continued to remind Preston more of a cheap motel than a traditional vault.

Danse put out a hand, stopping Preston in his tracks. For the first time the available paths branched- a second hallway crossed theirs. Preston peered around the corner to the right, and saw more of the same- rows of evenly spaced doors, the few that were ajar showing single bedrooms and kitchenettes. Right at the edge of where he could see, a third hallway ran parallel to the one they stood in.

"Looks like it's laid out in a grid," Preston said. "How far do you think it goes?"

"There's no reason to think it's bigger than an ordinary vault," Danse said. "But either way, we need to be systematic. We'll follow this hallway as far as we can, then worry about the other ones."

"Sir, yes, sir," Preston said drily.

Danse pulled a switchblade out from one of the crevices of his armour, and scratched a number 1 into the wall, with an arrow pointing back to the entry way. "We don't want to get lost down here."

They walked shoulder to shoulder, the only noise the hydraulics in Danse's suit and the hiss of the doors that they open as they pass. It barely felt like they'd made any progress at all when Danse stopped and gestured into a room with an open palm. "You've got about five minutes to get comfortable."

Preston sighed. He hadn't been optimistic, but part of him had hoped that they would find the General and get the hell out of this vault before the chimes rang again.

The room offered a single bed and a chair, which he sat in. That left Danse with no choice but to perch on the edge of the bed, but he wasn't ready to climb into the bed and let Danse take the chair like a mother watching over a sickly child.

"At least the next memory in the sequence is more pleasant," he said. "You might have to sit through us holed up together in the Museum of Freedom, but once the General arrives it really gets good. There's a deathclaw and a minigun and..." his voice faltered as the chimes sounded. Despite his bravado, those memories were still emotionally fraught.

Danse held a hand out, palm up the same way he had gestured at the door, and Preston rested his own hand on top of it. The metal glove was surprisingly warm as Danse closed his fingers around Preston's hand.

...

Sunshine streamed in through a hole in the bombed out wall. Danse hadn't spent a lot of time in the Museum of Freedom, but he knew that they weren't in Concord. They were back in the same room where this had all started.

The door swung open, and the younger Garvey walked in, a khaki duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a laser musket held in the other arm.

The real Garvey brought a hand up to his face, pressing the heel into the bridge of his nose. "No," he said. "No, we were through this part. How are we here again?" He swung around to face into a corner, and pressed his hands over his ears, his fingertips meeting at the back of his head. "No."

Danse ignored him. Gruff words of comfort weren't going to help, and Danse wasn't going to insult them both by offering them anyway.

It wasn't a mystery anymore why Garvey found this memory so distressing. Danse hadn't been entirely sure the previous day, given the distance and the chaos of the battlefield, but he knew for certain when the other Minuteman sauntered through the door after Garvey. It was the same man who had lead the Gunner attack.

How much time had elapsed between this memory and the battle, to take them from lovers to enemies? He crossed over to the hole in the wall and peered out, confirming what he'd suspected- the street that lay below was the same one they had fought on in the second memory.

"You can stop with the Nick Valentine act," Garvey said. "This is Clint." He gestured to the Minuteman in introduction. Clint continued to play out the past, oblivious to their presence. "Clint is an asshole."

"Yes, that had been the ultimate conclusion of my investigation," Danse said.

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the tableau, the two of them sniping at each other while in between them the memory of Garvey was being brought off with military efficiency. He didn't want to laugh because it was funny, but because sometimes laughing was the only way to silence the voice that was whispering _Ha ha, Danse, doesn't this remind you?_ Of sex inextricably tangled up with violence, and friends lost to far worse things than death. He was fiercely grateful that he wasn't the one trapped in the headset.

...

"What if she's not even here?" Preston asked, staring down into his bowl of noodle soup.

"What?" Danse looked up from his task of packing scavenged food into the storage compartments of his suit. "We came here based on your recon."

"I know." Preston twirled a lump of noodles around his spoon. "But the General always has her own agenda. What if she's been missing for weeks because she's off learning the point of view of some new faction? Maybe she came across that Enclave you were talking about yesterday."

"Nora would not pal around with the Enclave," Danse said, his voice ominous as a thunderstorm.

He knew Danse was right. He trusted the General more than he trusted himself. The logical part of his brain knew that. But the part of his brain that had watched the world collapse around him once and knew it always could again kept whispering. What if. What if.

He hated this. The worst part was that he knew what was happening, he could feel the way that his thoughts were getting twisted up down here in the darkness, jacked into this machine. He knew he would feel differently in the Castle, with honest dirt under his fingernails and new settlers every day. But he couldn't make himself feel that feeling, couldn't find the thread of it inside himself.

…

In the last memory of the day, Danse expected Garvey to turn his face away, hide from the memory the way he had in the morning. But instead, as the bullets started flying and the settlers scattered, he held a hand up.

"Wait," he said to Danse. "Last time I had to go ahead. I had to lead them out. But I don't need to leave him behind this time."

The young man who had been nursing an injured leg was lying crumpled in the road, his head resting in the lap of an older woman with the same eyes. As the group pulled away she slipped her hands under his head and eased it to the ground, taking care not to let it fall even though the boy was well beyond feeling any bump. She ran after the others, and a voice called out.

"Kyle. We have to go back for Kyle."

"No we don't," the other Garvey shouted.

Danse had given that order before. He'd received it too. Neither side of the equation was fun, but being the one to give it was far harder. He stared up the road, where the band of survivors had disappeared, and felt nothing short of awe. Garvey had been betrayed. He'd lost his leader. He'd lost most of his followers. But he had kept going, one foot in front of the other.

...

Preston scooted against the wall, taking care not to drag too much of the blanket with him as he moved. He was just as exhausted as the previous night, but sleep wasn't rushing up to take him this time.

Somewhere in the dark room Danse's power armour hissed. A moment later the mattress dipped and Danse tugged on the blanket as he settled in beside Preston. Preston could feel the warmth of his body for the first time. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light leaking through the crack under the door, he could see the solid curve of Danse's shoulder, and the dip of his waist under the blanket.

As he drifted off, he wondered how long it had been since another person had seen Danse without his armour on.

…

Danse woke up gasping, swinging his fists at imaginary assailants and kicking wildly so the blanket went flying. His frenzy tipped him off the edge of the bed, so he hit the floor with a thump that reverberated up his spine.

He'd been dreaming, dreaming about walking the halls just as they actually did all day. The Garvey in his dreams had walked beside him, their fingers accidentally brushing as they navigated the narrow hallway. Danse glanced down, only to see the skin of Garvey's hand fading to a sicky green. Garvey's face twisted in fear, then rage, as the green infection raced up his arm to cover the rest of his body. His head swelled, features morphing from handsome to bulbous and bloated. The skin around the headset strained as his head grew monstrous in size but the headset stayed stubbornly the same size, until the point where the skin could not stretch anymore and instead split like an over ripe mutfruit.

Danse pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, like he could massage the nightmare away. He retrieved the blanket from where it had crumpled on the floor and slid back in beside Garvey. Miraculously he was still sleeping. Danse stared at his still human face, trying to calm his breathing. Sleep didn't come.

...

Danse pressed a box of Dandy Boy Apples into Garvey's hands. "Let's not waste time in the mess this morning," he said. "If we break fast on foot, we can cover more ground."

"Sir, yes sir," Garvey said, accepting the box with a roll of his eyes that he softened with a smile. It was the second time he'd said that, and it made Danse's stomach twist in a way that he wasn't sure was bad.

They walked in a companionable silence that Danse wasn't sure how to fill. When he travelled with Nora he never felt lost for things to say - there was so much history of the brotherhood to share with her, so much to teach her,  so much to comment on in the Commonwealth. That wasn't the dynamic he had with Garvey. He felt like everything he wanted to say needed to be run through a filter first, compared to their shared experiences to see if it might set the conversation off on a path that might end with them digging deeper than he was ready to go.

Garvey didn't offer up any small talk either, seeming lost in his own thoughts. Maybe he felt the same way.

Danse frowned as for the second time he opened the door of a kitchenette to find the Eat-O-Tronic hanging open and empty. He glanced at Garvey, who nodded that he had noticed it too. Someone had cleared the area out.

"Could be the General," Garvey said, voice low.

Danse nodded, hopeful. Someone had either eaten or scavenged the food here, long after the Vault stopped replenishing the kitchenettes. Maybe their journey was at an end sooner than they'd estimated.

Or maybe they weren't alone. He dropped to a low crouch, scanning the hallway. Garvey followed suit, raising the laser musket that had been holstered on his back for more than a day. Danse couldn't remember the last time he'd gone so long without drawing his weapon.

Danse's geiger counter began to sing. "Radiation," he hissed.

They shuffled backwards until the unit fell silent again, and Danse gestured for Garvey to come in close for them to strategise.

"Do you see a source?" he asked, peering down the hallway. There were no overturned barrels, no uranium deposits, just the same endless series of doors they'd been walking past for days.

Garvey shrugged. "Maybe we're above the reactor. Or maybe something's busted in the walls."

"If we can't see the source, there's no way of knowing how wide the contaminated area is. We can't go through there. We don't know how long it will be until we find food again, and we don't know how much radiation we'll be exposed to."

"You're carrying food," Garvey said stubbornly. "We're exploring a Vault, not setting out to sea on a raft. If the food desert turns out to be bigger than we think, or the radiation gets worse, we can double time back here."

"I don't think you understand how vulnerable you are," Danse argued. "If you get pulled into a session and the radiation goes up-"

That was the wrong approach. Garvey's face shuttered at the word 'vulnerable', and he turned away from Danse and stormed down the hallway. "There are two options here. We go forward or we give up and leave the Vault. Since that's not an option, we have one option. Follow me or stay there."

Danse sighed and followed.

In the quiet of the Vault, it didn't take long to pick up signs of life. Not far from their position he could hear the sound of cardboard tearing. Someone was opening a box of food.

"Nora?" he called softly.

There was no answer, but the sound stopped. After a moment the door hissed open, and a head popped out into the hallway. It was not Nora's dark hair. It had no hair in fact, except for a few wisps still wrapped around the silver headset.

Even before it stepped into the light, the way it moved screamed ghoul. Danse's stomach turned as it shuffled into the hallway, revealing the dusty remains of a Vault 122 jumpsuit. Horror warred with pity as he realised what had happened. An original vault dweller, or maybe some poor scavenger who got caught in it's web, too preoccupied by the memories to notice the radiation slowly stripping away their humanity.

It looked at them with red shot eyes, aware but not interested, and shoved a handful of Sugar Bombs in its mouth. He could see that it was not feral- there was no sign of the violent, grasping instinct to destroy. But the expression on it's face was entirely vacant. What would two hundred years of the same traumatic memories over and over do to a person's mind?

An intrusive image of Garvey, shuffling down this hallway in a hundred years time, sustained infinitely by the radiation, rose in his mind. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to shoot the thing, end it's revolting half life, but he knew that Garvey wouldn't stand for that, and he had, almost from the moment the Vault door sealed behind them, become someone whose good opinion Danse craved.

"We need to retreat," he said urgently. "You're not safe here."

"She's no threat," Garvey said.

The ghoul dropped the empty packaging on the floor and dropped into a sitting position, back leaning against the wall. "I'm so close." Garvey was right, it was recognisably the voice of a woman, albeit one scuffed raw by radiation and disuse, making the word come out more like 'cloawse'. "This time for sure."

Danse looked at the time. Surprised by the ghoul's presence, he had lost track. He grabbed Garvey's wrist. "If we run we can be clear of the radiation before the-"

The chimes sounded. The ghoul tipped her head up to look at the ceiling, her mouth open as if in rapture.

...

"She seemed... happy," Preston said. The room in Quincy materialising around them was almost comforting. At least it was familiar. "Maybe not everyone gets a traumatic memory."

Danse didn't seem to even register what he had said. "God dammit," he shouted. "We weren't that far from safety. If we'd been paying attention-”

Preston stared at him in surprise. He hadn't realised Danse was capable of blowing his top. Half the time he sounded like he was reading directly from a Brotherhood of Steel operations manual, so seeing him let loose and actually express his frustration was a pleasant change. "It will be fine. Soaking up rads isn't my favourite thing, but I have RadAway in my pockets."

Behind them the door opened, and Memory Preston's duffel bag thumped onto the bed.

"A lot of good RadAway will be if you wake up already ghoulified," Danse snapped.

Not frustrated, Preston realised. Terrified. But surely he wasn't this worked up over barely enough radiation to set the geiger counter ticking. "We've got time, if there's something you want to talk about," he said.

"I don't want to talk," Danse said. "I want to find Nora. I want to leave this place." With the perfect timing that could only come from repeating the same day three times, the door opened and Clint walked in. "I want to stop seeing this guy's face."

Danse grunted in irritation and swung an arm at Clint, clearly expecting it to be a futile gesture that slid straight through him like he a ghost. Instead his armoured forearm connected with Clint's stomach at full speed, and Clint doubled over with a scream.

"What the fuck just happened?" Memory Preston said, springing off the bed and looking around the room. From his perspective, Clint had just been attacked by an invisible monster.

Preston felt his mouth drop open. Danse mirrored his expression, eyes wide with shock.

They could interact with the memories.

On the ground, Clint fought for air, his hands clawing at his stomach. Memory Preston fell on his knees beside him. "What was it? What's happening? Is it your appendix?"

"Cannonball?" Clint gasped. The first drops of blood appeared on his lips, confirming Preston's suspicion that Danse's hit had caused internal injuries. He'd thought it would be satisfying to watch Clint die in pain, and it was in it's own way, but internal bleeding was a terrible way for anyone to go.

"I have a Stimpak," Memory Preston said, scrambling to his feet and going for his duffel bag.

Clint's ragged breathing fell silent.

Preston crossed the room and approached his younger self. Clint had been an asshole, but this Preston never got an opportunity to learn that. This Preston had just watched a cherished comrade die horribly. An invisible hand on his shoulder would probably be more shocking than comforting, but the impulse to offer comfort was too strong.

The second he made contact with his younger self, the room shifted, as if he had teleported to where the other Preston had been standing. He lifted his hands up to confirm- the scar that had decorated the back of his hand since the battle to retake the Castle was gone, replaced by the unmarked skin of his younger self.

...

"We can change things," Garvey said, his meal forgotten in front of him as he turned over the possibilities. "I took over my own body. I don't just have to watch, I can take control."

Danse couldn't share Garvey's excitement. They'd left the patch of radiation behind, but not the memory of the woman they'd found inside it. _CLOAWSE_ echoed  in his head. "You wouldn't actually be changing anything though. It's not time travel."

"I know that." Garvey shoved a slice of cram in his mouth, chewing quickly as he thought. "But maybe that's the whole purpose? Maybe we're not supposed to be reliving the memories. We're supposed to be learning from them. Finding a better way. Maybe that's the key to getting it off."

"Like some kind of game? You keep reloading the holotape until you save the princess and collect all the coins?" Danse didn't want to sound so skeptical. Tossing ideas around and exploring all options was key to making a team work. But something about Garvey's enthusiasm unnerved him.

...

Preston could barely contain the excitement that was fizzing in him when the battle of Quincy materialised around them. He leaned over the balcony rail, this time eager to see the approaching Gunners instead of cringing away from the sight.

What he saw confirmed one thing- their actions in the earlier memory had carried through. At the head of the Gunner force was a power armoured Tessa, no Clint in sight.

"I was right," Preston crowed. "We changed it. Everything is going to be different."

Down below a shell exploded, this time fired by Tessa. The settler still screamed, still stumbled into the street with his hands clawing uselessly at a wound that was already fatal. The settlers kept falling, gunned down by a force that had only been reduced by one.

Preston stopped crowing as they watched. Maybe, he realised with bile burning at the back of his throat, Clint had been right about one thing. Maybe defending Quincy was a suicide mission.

...

In the final session of the day, the setting sun cast a dimming light over a train of people trudging away from Quincy. A longer train, Preston realised, some of his earlier optimism sparking again. Quincy may have still fallen, but without Clint's betrayal more people made it out.

"Look," Danse said, nodding to a figure at the head of the column. "That's new."

"That's Hollis," Preston breathed. Of course. Without Clint's need for vengeance, Hollis had made it out alive. With someone far more experienced than Preston leading them, the survivors had a much better chance.   

The younger Preston hurried up the side of the group, falling into step beside their leader. "Colonel," he said, keeping his voice low. "We're very exposed here. We need to take more stealth measures. Maybe even split the group in two so-"

"Nonsense," Hollis said, his voice thick with the fake jolliness he would put on when things were truly dire. "That will slow us down, which would be suicide. Haste is the key here, if we can make it over the next hill we can join up with the Minutemen stationed nearby."

There were no Minutemen stationed nearby, Preston knew. The only two Minutemen left in the world were right there, arguing on a shattered roadway. But the younger Preston didn't know that. Or maybe he did know that, and didn't want to say so. Either way, he remained silent and returned to his position at the rear of the convoy.

Preston had no idea what was going on in the head of his younger self. It wasn't a memory anymore- he'd never lived this. Now that his actions were more than just a replay of memories, clearly something was controlling its independent decision making- be it the vault mainframe, a rudimentary artificial intelligence, or maybe Preston's own subconscious. It was a strange feeling, to see someone wearing his face and having no idea what was going on behind it.  

He looked to Danse, who had pulled on his blank military mask, which Preston was coming to understand meant he had very strong feelings about what was going on that he didn't think it was appropriate to share.

"Thoughts?" he asked.

Danse pointed a gloved finger at the other Preston. "That soldier can't see the future like you can. But he can see the present more clearly than this one can." He pointed at Hollis.

Preston bristled, even though Danse had it dead to rights. But there was a difference between judging your own heroes, and hearing them judged by an outsider.

Even an outsider who he was beginning to like.

A great deal.

But that was a point to consider when he wasn't up against the ticking clock of a raider ambush. "Cover me," he said, heading for his younger self. "I'm going in."

Taking control of his younger self was even easier than it had been the first time. He'd expected some push back against his intrusion. But instead it was like slipping inside a suit of power armor.

"Sturges," he called. "We're going to split the group. Gather five settlers. Try to pick..." he surveyed the convoy, running the math in his head. He didn't want to leave either group with too few defenders or too many liabilities. "Three strong, two weaker. And the Longs."

Sturges' face immediately broke into a look of relief. "Sanity dawns." He spun on his heel and immediately started tapping settlers- he'd probably been considering his picks for the past ten miles.

"And Mama Murphy," Preston added.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Hollis yelled. "I gave you a direct order. You're going to get these people killed."

"You're going to get these people killed," Preston yelled. "If one group goes wide and the other takes the direct road to Jamaica Plains, we'll be close enough to back each other up, without being the definition of a target rich environment."

"We're not going to Jamaica Plains. The reinforcements-" Hollis began.

"There are no reinforcements," Preston hissed. He'd have screamed it with every ounce of air in his lungs if he hadn't been worried about attracting attention. Obviously Hollis picked up on his vehemence, because his eyes widened and he took a step back.

It felt good. For the first time he realised Clint wasn't the only person he'd been nursing a grudge against for the Quincy massacre.

He didn't feel the raider bullet rip through the base of his skull. He felt a sensation quite similar to when a loose tooth finally pulled free, as his younger self's body fell to the ground, but he remained standing.

The settlers scattered as the raiders poured onto the road. Preston stood frozen, shaken to the core by the sight of his own body, the back of his neck a bloodied ruin.

Distantly he heard the hum of Danse's laser as he joined the fray, but even an invisible Brotherhood knight on their side made no difference to the outcome. Hollis threw himself to the ground under the rattle of minigun fire, and didn't get back up again. The few settlers that hadn't run rallied around Sturges, who was thrown off his feet by a frag grenade.

"Where's the old lady?" one of the raiders shouted. He surveyed the carnage, his dark eyes wild behind white face paint.

"I'm here," Mama Murphy said, her voice tired. "Something is not right here," she muttered, stepping out of the grenade's smoke with her hands held at shoulder height. "Just let the others go."

"What others?" the raider laughed.The smoke cleared, showing that the few figures left standing were all raiders.Two of his lackeys moved to either side of her, frog marching her down the road.

...

Danse crawled under the covers, carefully leaving a space between himself and Garvey. He could tell Garvey was awake, by the way his body radiated tension.

"They were in a better position when we evacuated Quincy," Garvey muttered. "But the outcome was worse."

They weren't in a better position, Danse thought. They weren't being lead by you anymore.

"Go to sleep, Garvey," he said.

"The key must be earlier. It's not just about getting Hollis through the battle alive. It's not just about getting as many survivors out as possible." Garvey drummed his fingers on the mattress, the sound muffled by the blanket but still loud in the otherwise silent room. "What do you think?"

"I don't know," Danse said. Garvey sighed beside him, letting his whole body shudder with it.

"You know Garvey, the Brotherhood medics include trained therapists. They're for the troops, but if you ever wanted to talk to someone, we could come to an arrangement," Danse said. "They're good."

He doesn't realise until the words are out of his mouth that it's a confession. He fights the urge to walk it back, to tag on 'or so I've heard'. But he wasn't ashamed of those four letters written in his file. Part of his job as a leader was to protect those who serve with him, and this was one area where he needed to lead by example. No matter how vulnerable it leaves him feeling.

Garvey's fingers stilled. "I think we should focus on getting out of here first. We have to solve this if we want to get out those doors."

Did they? Danse still wasn't convinced, but clearly Garvey had fully committed to this path.

"Clint must be the key. We need to convince Clint not to betray the Minutemen."

Danse tipped his head to the side, letting his cheek rest against the cool sheets, and stole a glance at Garvey's face in the dark. "What are you going to do?"

"Talk to him. Clint was a real Minuteman once. I need to remind him of that."

...

"Hey," Clint said. "Sheets on the bed."

Danse's flexed his fingers and clenched them into a fist at his side. Killing Clint the previous day had been an accident, but it had the upside that Danse hadn't had to hear Clint's voice again, hadn't had to look at his face, hadn't had to watch Garvey's face soften into the private smile he reserved for his intimates.

He much preferred it when the people he killed stayed dead.

"Oh yeah," Garvey hummed. The old bed frame squeaked as he sat on the bed.

When Danse agreed with the plan, he had underestimated how much it was going to bother him to watch Garvey flirt with Clint. Sure, he'd seen the scene play out many times already, but that was when the Garvey on the bed was just a shadow. This was his Garvey- the Garvey that he knew, he meant. This was with his real live companion controlling the scene, leading Clint to the bed, talking in that low voice that sent Danse's stomach twisting.

Garvey's belt buckle clicked as Clint reached for it and Garvey finally, finally went off script.

"Can we talk?" Garvey asked, wrapping his long fingers around Clint's wrist to still his hand.

"God Preston, if you've caught feelings now is not the time."

Garvey's laugh had so many layers of bitterness that Danse doubted even he understood them all. "No, this isn't that talk. Do you remember taking the oath, when you joined the Minutemen?"

Clint's side eye spoke volumes. "I remember there was a hot meal and beer afterwards."

"I was seventeen when I took mine," Garvey continued. "It felt like the culmination of my whole life. Finally I was part of something bigger than myself. Something that mattered."

Clint pushed up off the bed. "Who have you been talking to?"

"Nobody. But I've been watching you. And I'm not blind. I know we're in a tough situation here. It would be natural to be having some doubts-" Garvey glanced in the corner where Danse stood watching. He'd noticed that Garvey's gaze often swept rooms looking for him- he was a man who liked to know where his allies were. He liked reassurance that he wasn't alone. It wasn't a flaw.

Except when those allies were invisible.

"Why the fuck do you keep doing that?" Clint asked. He whipped his head around in an exaggerated imitation. "You're talking crazy and acting crazy. You're as bad as Hollis."

"I'm scared," Garvey said, to Danse's surprise. It was raw, and honest, and off script from his plan to appeal to Clint's buried Minuteman spirit. "We've got six soldiers and two or three extra capable settlers. We're surrounded by Gunners and nobody's returning Hollis's calls."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Clint said. "There are no reinforcements coming?"

Even with Garvey pushing the conversation off it's original course, that was one of Clint's standard lines, Danse noted. The memories seemed to _want_ to veer back toward the original shape.

"No," Garvey said. "There are no reinforcements coming. But that doesn't mean we can't make it out of this thing, Clint."  

"You know how we can make it out of here?" Clint asked. "By getting the fuck out now. The Gunners will let us go."

"That's just a different way of dying, Clint. If we abandoned these people, you wouldn't be you anymore. I wouldn't be me."

"We don't have to die here, Preston," Clint argued. "If it's a choice between that and becoming someone else, you're welcome to start calling me Uncle Bob.”

He stomped out, disappearing into the swirling nothing that existed just beyond the door.

Garvey sighed and flopped back onto the bed, his eyes staring up at the ruined ceiling but clearly seeing something different. “That went well,” he said.

Danse sat on the edge of the bed. “At least I didn’t accidentally kill him this time.”

It was a lie to imply that would have been a worse outcome. As far as Danse was concerned, the scale ranged from ‘Clint dies’ as the best possible outcome to ‘I stand silently by while he fellates you’ as the worst.

Garvey sighed, long and deep. “I don’t know why I thought it would be easy to convince him. If the General were here, she’d say one sentence and he’d start whistling Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

That was true. People became weirdly persuadable when Nora was around. “Sometimes I wonder if she’s a psyker,” Danse said.

“Could just be that naval cannon she carries with her.”

Garvey laughed at his own joke, scrunching up his eyes and looking genuinely happy for a brief moment. He tipped his head to the side and looked up at Danse, still smiling.

Danse was suddenly intimately aware that he had taken Clint’s usual position on the bed. Garvey was still sprawled out, his body language open and inviting. All Garvey needed to do was crack the right joke, make an offer or hell, lean over slightly, and Danse would go all in. But that ball was entirely in Garvey’s court. He was depending on Danse to keep him safe while he ran this gauntlet. To make sure he was fed and had somewhere soft to fall when the sessions or exhaustion swept him away. Maybe Garvey didn’t agree that he depended on Danse, but he did, and the last thing they needed was for Danse to make things weird.

…

The rest of the day’s sessions played out as if they were trying to prove that Preston had achieved nothing in his attempt to change things. Clint still appeared at the head of the Gunners on the overpass. Innocent people still died on the streets of Quincy, and on the road out.

...

Danse stepped out of his armor as soon as they found a suitable room for the night, and sat on the edge of the bed. Preston tried not to stare at him in the figure hugging red jumpsuit he wore underneath. This was the first time he had taken the armor off with the lights still on. It definitely wasn’t because he had something to hide.

Preston shrugged off his great coat and draped it over the armor’s shoulder. Danse raised one eyebrow at his precious suit being used as a coat rack, but said nothing. Preston balanced his hat on the other shoulder, and still drew no rebuke.

Two days ago Danse so obviously holding his tongue would have irked him- he would have assumed Danse was treating him with kid gloves. But now he thought that the reason Danse didn’t comment on him interfering with the armour was because he didn’t really mind.

He liked Preston. Maybe he even trusted him.

“What’s the plan tomorrow?” Danse asked. “Try to persuade him again?”

Preston stared down at the buttons of his waistcoat, unbuttoning them carefully so he didn’t have to look at Danse’s face while he thought about it. “I don’t think I can. And you know what the definition of insanity is.”

Danse nodded. “According to Brotherhood regulations it’s mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior. But the word is only used when a soldier is being tried for criminal behaviour. When a soldier is struggling with mental health issues commanding officers are encouraged to use a less confronting term.”

Preston’s fingers paused on the last button. “Wow, that’s… can you recite all of the Brotherhood regulations like that?”

Danse shrugged. “Most. I’ve always had a good memory. But I’ve also had my reasons for looking that one up recently.”

Preston kicked himself internally. After Danse’s subtle confession earlier, he should have realised that. “I was referring to the old quote ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.’”

“A psychiatrist said that?” Danse frowned.

“No, a writer. I read it in a book once.” Preston crawled into the bed from the foot, taking his usual space against the wall.

“Well I think that’s ridiculous. Sometimes you have to keep trying. Perseverance isn’t a flaw.”

Preston knew that Danse was never all aboard his plan to try to change the outcome. He’d thought that maybe Danse was biased by his distaste for the pre-war technology, or maybe he just didn’t see the point. So that was a surprise. “You think I should try again?”

“You’re the mission command on this one, Garvey. It’s your brain we’re wading around in.”

“You should call me Preston,” he said softly.

The bed bounced as Danse got up to turn out the light. “Ok Preston,” he said in the dark.

…

Preston tried for three days to persuade Clint to fight on the side of the Minutemen. Three times he failed, three times Clint stormed out even more determined to save himself, and three times Quincy fell again.

“I was so sure it was my fault for not picking up on what he was thinking,” Preston whispered in the dark. “That if I had, if I’d said something, he wouldn’t have done it. But it was all over the moment he was capable of even considering defecting to the Gunners.”

Danse shifted beside him. Preston didn’t worry that he’d woken him up. He’d noticed that Danse never fell asleep before he did.

“Illusion of control,” Danse mumbled. “How long have you been remembering Quincy as if it was something you did?”

“Months,” Preston admitted.

Danse shifted closer. They were already pressed together from shoulder to knee in the narrow bed, but the movement was enough to take it from necessary contact to a deliberate mingling of the warmth of their bodies.

“What if we killed him again tomorrow,” Danse suggested, his voice low and sleepy. “Just the one time.”

…

They didn’t kill him again, although Preston seriously considered it the next morning. He stepped into his younger self’s shoes, turned around to watch Clint walk into the room after him, and felt all of his motivation and energy evaporate. He just couldn’t face failing a fifth time.

“Fuck it,” he said. Clint’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. It wasn’t like Preston never swore, but he did so rarely enough that the other Minutemen sat up and took notice when he got really mad.

“You’ve changed your mind about the nap?” Clint asked.

“Shut up Clint. I know you’re planning to betray us to the Gunners.”

Tucked into his usual spot in the corner, Danse looked surprised at Preston’s outburst, but also… amused? Relieved? Preston felt a small pinch of guilt, for putting him through so many rounds of repetition.

“What the fuck? No I’m not,” Clint said. He put one hand on his backup weapon, a pistol holstered at his hip. “Who have you been talking to?”

“Right, you’re not actually planning that at this point.” Preston waved a hand dismissively. “You will be in a few minutes, and I don’t have the patience to play the whole thing out. Let’s do the condensed version. No reinforcements are coming, you don’t want to die, maybe the Gunners will save you. Right?”

"Preston, you've got to be fucking kidding me. There are no-”

“Shh!” Preston held a finger to his lips. “Just assume I know what you’re going to say, let’s skip you actually saying it.”

“Preston have you gone completely fucking insane?” Clint’s eyes flicked around the room, as if he expected a dozen Minutemen to jump out from behind the bed and shout ‘Gotcha!’

“Not according to the Brotherhood of Steel regulations,” Preston said.

Danse tightened his jaw,as if  trying to hold back any sign of amusement, but still the corners of his mouth twitched.

“There’s nothing I can do to talk you out of it,” Preston continued. “Killing you doesn’t help-”

“What?”

“Shh. Hell, killing you makes it worse. So what else can we do?”

“Evacuate,” Danse said quietly.

“Evacuate,” Preston repeated, although to Clint it must have sounded like he pulled the idea from thin air. “If we take all of the resources we would have put into defending the town and instead focused on getting the survivors to Sanctuary, would things turn out ok?”

“What the fuck is Sanctuary?”

“Shut the fuck up Clint,” Preston said cheerfully. “I need to go talk to Hollis.”

He opened the door. On the other side a set of steps lead down to the street, the same whitewashed cracked concrete he remembered climbing up to get to the bedroom months ago. The swirling, sparkling nothingness that had sat beyond the door in every other morning session was gone. Now that he was trying to get somewhere instead of just trying to escape the memory, the headset had provided him the means to leave.

He felt like he had as a kid, in the rare moments that he was allowed to play Red Menace on the settlement’s one terminal. Most of the time it was the same level or two over and over again, with him wiping out quickly and starting from scratch. But sometimes he would get a lucky run, and the music would change and he would progress to the next level. That was how you knew you were getting somewhere.

…

“No,” Sturges said flatly. “If evacuation was the best option, we’d have evacuated already. We’ve got kids here. We’ve got the elderly. We’ve got settlers who aren’t mobile. Trying to get a group like that on the road is suicide.”

Preston stared around the room. After so many days seeing nothing but the inside walls of a vault, the room in Quincy and the roads outside Lexington and Jamaica Plains, the sight of an entirely new room was more breathtaking than any sunset. It was on par with that first glimpse of the Commonwealth as a whole out of the side of the vertibird. The room with Quincy’s radio had four new walls, a mismatched collection of furniture and a dust caked rug. It was beautiful.

Danse looked similarly impressed.  

“Staying here is suicide,” Clint interjected. “We’re outnumbered and outgunned. They’ll be able to get the high ground with ease. This town is dead already.”

“We won’t be outnumbered when the-” Hollis began, and Clint held up a hand.

“If you utter the word ‘reinforcements’ I will shoot you myself,” he snarled. “They’re not coming you delusional old man.”

“The reinforcements-” Hollis continued. He was cut off by Clint’s roar of frustration, and anything more Hollis might have said was drowned out by the blast of a pipe pistol firing in an enclosed space.

Preston screamed, pressing his hands to his ringing ears, but it was already too late. The damage was done, both to his ear drums and to Hollis, who stared down at the spreading red patch on his waistcoat with complete bewilderment.

Danse moved to swing at Clint, but Preston was faster. He swung the butt of his laser musket at him, knocking the still smoking pipe pistol from his hand, then smashing it into his jaw. Clint collapsed to the ground.

“Fucking Minutemen,” Sturges said. “I’d heard your outfit was a complete shambles, but we were in desperate times. I shouldn’t have bothered.”

The session faded out with those words still ringing in Preston’s ears.

...

For the first time the midday session opened not on a balcony above the streets of Quincy, but on the road to Jamaica Plain.

The younger Preston was in a deep crouch, scuttling out from behind a boulder shadowed by a tiny group of people who must have been the only citizens he’d convinced to evacuate Quincy with him. He lifted an arm, finger pointing to the light in the church tower.

Preston left him be. He could assume control, but what was left to change? He could steer them away from the deathtrap of Jamaica Plains, but where in the Commonwealth was both safe and reachable by such a tiny group? They certainly wouldn’t make it to Diamond City or Goodneighbor, and Sanctuary was a complete pipe dream.

Clint was nowhere to be seen. Whether he’d met some kind of justice inside Quincy, or had taken his broken jaw over to the Gunners would remain a mystery.

Preston couldn’t see Sturges in the group, or Mama Murphy, or any of the Longs. He did see, however, the nameless settler in a grubby white shirt who had been the first to die in the true timeline, killed by a frag grenade in the street.

Behind them an explosion went off, the first boom of Tessa’s rocket launcher in the town.

The sound seemed to spook the evacuees, because one of them set off at a run, turning away from the road to cut a shorter path through a hollow shadowed by another boulder. The others followed him like startled radstags, leaving the younger Preston crouched alone on the road, hissing for them to stop.

The yao guai who had been asleep in the hollow roared, the settlers screamed, and Preston finally began to understand.

…

Danse guided the knife carefully though the hunk of cram. Over the course of their time in the vault he had perfected the art of shaving off exactly the right amount that would fry up into something that tasted nothing like bacon but was still satisfyingly rich and salty.

Still he would kill for a brahmin steak or a vegetable soup fresh off the fire. He was almost beginning to understand how people could eat molerat meat.

Almost.

Preston sat silent at the table, staring down at the untouched Nuka Cola Danse had set in front of him.

“Are you here with me, Preston?” Danse asked. The name still felt too familiar on his tongue, but Preston usually looked pleased when he used it.

Except this time. Preston kept staring down at the drink. “Yes. I’m just thinking.”

That was a relief. Danse had had soldiers disassociate on him. After some missions, dropping to the floor with your rifle on your knees and your mind somewhere else was a rational choice. But once a person took leave of their body, it was hard to keep them safe.

He couldn’t help feeling guilty. It had been his advice to keep trying. Preston would have let Danse persuade him to give up, if he’d tried.

They ate silently, and Danse had just pushed his plate aside when the chimes sounded. Preston sighed and laid his hand on the table, palm up and fingers splayed. Danse covered it with his own hand and on impulse stroked his thumb across the soft patch of skin inside Preston’s wrist.

The vault faded away before he could see Preston’s reaction.

…

The younger Preston walked alone, his laser musket strapped to his back and his hat in his hands. Far in the distance, the ruins of Quincy stood silent.

If seventeen year old Preston had seen his older self, he’d have been impressed. He looked just like the Minutemen who had recruited him, with his straight posture and neatly cut coat. Life had been hard for him growing up, as it was for any kid dragged up in the wasteland, but not so hard that he didn’t believe in heroes.

And seventeen year old Preston had been right to. Heroes existed and there was always something worth fighting for. He just wished this version of himself knew that.

“I know I look like an old holotape hero, striding into the sunset,” Preston said to Danse, “but having those survivors depending on me was a lifeboat, and kept me afloat until the General took me safe to shore. Without them…I’m on my way to kill myself.”

It frightened Preston to say it out loud. Danse was a soldier, and while his measured demeanor had proven to hide a surprising depth of compassion, Preston was all too familiar with the biases and attitudes that ran through military outfits. A large part of him was prepared for Danse to recoil, or retreat back to clipped and detached Paladin Danse out of discomfort.

“I’m glad that you had them, then,” Danse said softly. “The Commonwealth would be a much worse place without you in it.”

The headset, for once, was merciful. The other Preston’s back disappeared around a bend, and whatever move he made next was left to their imaginations as the wasteland faded away.

…

Danse waited for Preston to begin the conversation. He waited through their dinner of cup noodles, and waited while they took turns scrubbing the day’s grime off with the harsh tarry soap provided in the vault’s showers. He waited while they picked a bedroom, and climbed into bed in their usual configurations.

It was only once he had switched off the light and the familiar blanket of darkness had fallen over them that Preston brought up anything more than light comments about the food or logistics.

“You’ve told me what memory you would choose, if you could,” Preston said. “But not the other one.”

“What memory would the headset choose for me?” Danse asked.

“We are assuming that it deliberately chooses traumatic memories, right?” Preston said.

“I am. The residents are wearing Parson’s State wrist bands. We’re only a few miles from there. Knowing Vault-Tec’s modus operandi, I think it’s a safe bet that this was an experiment looking at PTSD.”

Preston sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Just… why.”

“Who knows. Why play mind games on drug addicts. Why deliberately infect people with diseases.”

Preston rapped his knuckles against Danse’s thigh. He was just dressed in his boxers, since he hadn’t wanted to put his jumpsuit back on when he was so fresh from his shower. His skin tingled at the touch. “It’s fine if you’re avoiding the question.”

“No, I’m not.” Preston had been laid as bare as a person could be without an autopsy table involved. It was only fair that Danse open up a little too. “I told you that I came from the Capital wasteland, didn’t I?”

“Mmmhmm,” Preston mumbled.

It was easier than he’d expected, telling the story. The darkness helped, smoothing away any minute changes in Preston’s expression that his anxious mind would have interpreted as pity or disgust. But most importantly he felt close to Preston, and that made it easy for the words to tumble out.

His voice still caught as he described the decision to destroy the super mutant that had once been Cutler. Preston put a hand on his hip, his palm warm through the fabric of his boxers.

“I’m just glad I’m not wearing a headset,” he confessed. “I wouldn’t survive a cycle of eat, sleep, repeat the worst day of my life. You have an amazing strength.”

“I’m not sorry that I put it on,” Preston said. “Even before we came here I was stuck in that cycle. Eat, sleep, come up with ever more ridiculous reasons why I was personally responsible. At least now I know that none of my ideas would have panned out. Clint’s a monster who deserves what’s coming to him for betraying us, but Quincy wouldn’t have survived even if he hadn’t. Killing him made no difference. Trying to turn him made no difference. Evacuating definitely made no difference.”

Preston shifted, searching for a more comfortable position that left him tucking his shoulder under Danse’s arm, their chests pressed together. “It was always going to end with the death of the Minutemen. It could never have gone differently.”

Something clicked, and Danse tensed up, straining to hear if it was the sound of a trap being triggered. Something hit the bare skin of his shoulder, a warm circle of metal.

“Oh my god,” Preston said. “It’s gone.”

Danse grabbed the thing, and ran his thumb over it to confirm that it really was Preston’s headset. “That’s it?” he said, incredulous. “This whole vault is just a pop psychology experiment on the importance of ‘letting go’?”

Preston tipped his head to the side so his cheek was flush against Danse’s chest and the sharp exhale of his laughter ghosted across his skin. “Fuck you Vault-tec,” he whispered.  

Danse cupped Preston’s face with his hand, running his fingertips across Preston’s temple to prove to himself that the headset really was gone. Preston winced slightly as he touched skin rubbed raw and sensitive by the constant presence of the metal.

“Sorry, sorry,” Danse said, moving to pull his hand away, but Preston wrapped surprisingly strong fingers around his wrist and held it in place.

“Don’t,” he whispered. His stubble scraped against Danse’s palm as he dragged Danse’s hand down so he could press a kiss to the fleshy part of the heel, then inside his wrist where his pulse thumped wildly.

He pulled his lips back and rested his teeth against Danse’s skin. When Danse didn’t pull his arm away he smiled, the movement tickling the now hypersensitive skin of Danse’s wrist, and bit down. 

Danse gasped, his hips jerking forward at the sharp points of pain, electricity running down his arm and pooling in his stomach. 

“You’re into that, huh?” Preston asked, his voice low and breathless. 

“Apparently,” Danse said. 

Preston swung one leg over him and shifted his weight so Danse was forced onto his back, with Preston sitting on his thighs. “I just want to be clear,” Preston said. “This has been a hell of a thing. You’re too smart for me to get away with pretending it hasn’t messed me up a bit. But this isn’t me asking you to pick up the pieces and put me back together.With your dick.”

“That’s fair,” Danse said. He’d known people who were  _ too _ into that- making love to a person when they were at their lowest ebb, cradling their face and whispering soothing nothings into their ear. They got to feel like a hero. And didn’t like it when their partner tried to take that feeling away from them by getting better. 

He’d always kept a close eye on people who gave him that vibe.

“What we should do is have ‘holy shit we survived  _ that _ sex.’” 

Preston ran the palms of his hands up Danse’s chest, sweeping across his pectorals and over his shoulders. When his thumbs rested at the outside edge of his collarbones he stopped, and he rubbed small circles into his skin. Danse rolled his shoulders back, on the edge of overstimulation just from Preston’s hands on him.

It wasn’t lost on Preston. “When was the last time someone touched you without a layer of power armor between you?”

“I got a post mission medical two days before we left the Prydwen,” Danse said, his voice uneven.

Preston tsked. “You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

“Oh. Before we came to the Commonwealth,” Danse admitted. “After that I was holed up with my squad, and would never fraternise with a subordinate.” 

“I’m sorry that I kept calling you ‘sir’, then.” Preston said. He sounded genuinely sorry, but he was also still drawing tiny circles on Danse’s skin. 

“No, that’s fine,” Danse said, his voice cracking. “I’m extremely okay with it.” 

“I see,” Preston said. He let the silence hang for a long moment, then added, “Sir.” 

He dropped forward, the weight of his body knocking the air out of Danse’s chest. “What do you want,” he whispered, his breath warm on Danse’s neck. “I could blow you.” 

The idea of Preston moving away, even a few feet, was suddenly unbearable. He didn’t want to lose the weight of him, covering every inch of his skin. He hooked an arm around Preston’s back and grabbed his rear with his other hand, dragging him closer so their hips were pressed together. He could feel the solid length of Preston’s dick, and shifted until it slotted in against his own.

Preston pressed a kiss to his neck and then bit the same spot. He moved down the curve of his neck, kissing and nipping until he reached the point where his shoulder met his neck. There, Preston sank his teeth in in earnest, hard enough to set Danse’s head swimming and deep enough that there would be a bruise there the next day, beneath the shoulder panel of his armor. His hips stuttered as he imagined the ache of his ravaged skin pressing against cold steel. Preston rocked his own hips in time, and they quickly found a rhythm that was just the right speed, just the right friction of fabric and skin.

Preston cried out first but didn’t slow down his pace, dragging his body against Danse’s until he came, gasping and panting in a way that reminded him uncomfortably of waking up shaking in an almost identical bed a few days earlier.

Preston slowed and stilled, his body going limp on top of Danse. 

“You want me to move?” Preston asked, his breathing still heavy. 

_ No, never, _ Danse thought, but he said, “In a minute.” 

That minute became five, then ten of them lying in a heap together, their breaths mingling together as half gasps and almost laughs, and then Danse fell asleep more easily than he had for years. 

…

After so many days spent with all of his focus on trying to ‘win’ against the headset, it was disorienting remembering that their actual goal was finding the General.

Preston's heart stuttered in his chest when the chimes sounded for the morning session.

Danse reached out and put a hand on his back, just below his left shoulder. It was half comfort, half precaution.

But the minutes ticked past, and the vault walls remained around them. Preston sagged into Danse’s touch. It was hard to believe that he might really be free.

Without the interruption of the sessions, they searched the vault with a speed that had been unimaginable a day earlier. Even slowed by the need to open every door and shine a light in every corner, by the time the chimes for the afternoon session sounded, they had made it to the end of the first corridor.

Preston pressed a palm to the nondescript grey wall that marked the deepest point of the vault. “I guess that's it. Considering what a battle it was to get here, it's a little underwhelming.”

“Let’s leave a plaque,” Danse suggested. He scratched a quick series of arrows pointing back the way they came. Underneath, he carved ‘PRESTON GARVEY’ and ‘PALADIN DANSE’ so deep into the wall that it wouldn't wear away for centuries.

“Maybe we should add some advice. For the next poor sucker who gets stuck down here.” Preston sucked on his teeth, thinking about it. “But I think ‘give up’ might be misconstrued.”

“I think they're going to need to work it out for themselves,” Danse said. He gestured around the corner, where the next corridor waited. “Shall we?”

When they are about halfway back to the surface, Danse threw an arm out to stop Preston. “Do you hear that?”

It took him a moment of straining to hear the voice that floated down the hallway. Danse had to have remarkable hearing to have picked it up as early as he did.

“Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue? Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.”

Her voice wasn't as polished as some that he'd heard, but the General’s song had a depth of feeling that made him feel embarrassed to be standing in the corridor listening to her.

“Oh, cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow. But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.”

Danse obviously didn’t feel the same way, as he followed her voice down the hall without hesitation. They found her curled up in an armchair, looking at least twenty pounds lighter than she had been when she left the Castle in search of a biometric scanner. Her eyes stared straight ahead at nothing, but her lips were curled up in a smile. “So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep. I'm rocking my baby. Babies don't keep.”

Her hands were draped over the armrests, palms up. Preston reached out and gently grabbed one. The callouses left by the grip of her gun scraped his palm, and the vault faded away.

…

The world inside Nora’s head was soft and clean and smelled faintly of warm apple pie. Everything in the room was whole and unblemished and in it’s rightful place. Danse had never seen a place with no sharp edges, no hard surfaces, no _dust_. Even the gleaming Brotherhood facilities he’d seen had simply swapped the chaos of Wasteland settlements for cold steel.

“I know this place,” Preston said quietly. “This is Sanctuary Hills.”

A man sat on the couch, his gaze fixed on the television. Preston and Danse passed by, invisible, and for the second time followed Nora’s voice down the hall.

“Where is the mother whose house is so shocking? She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.”

Nora sat in the rocker, her eyes locked on Shaun’s face. Her face was smooth and soft, missing the angry red scar she’d sported ever since a nasty run in with a deathclaw.

Her son was terribly new, his face still squished and his eyes bleary. His eyelids fluttered, and closed.

Nora’s eyes widened when she saw them in the doorway of the nursery, but she simply put a finger to her lips.

The man on the couch began to shout, and Nora’s face crumpled. She pressed a kiss to the baby’s forehead, and then stepped out.

It was creepy to watch the Nora he knew split away from her younger self, like a bloodbug bursting out of an egg. The younger Nora ran toward her husband’s voice, Shaun bundled in her arms, and Danse stepped carefully aside to let her pass.

“I thought someone might come after me,” the real Nora said. “I didn’t expect you to be together, though.”

“We’re here to get you out,” Preston said. “The way to get the headset off is-”

“I know,” Nora interrupted. “I think so, anyway. Just… one more minute, ok?”

She walked out of the room, and onto the street where panicked neighbours were trying to pack their cars, weeping. She headed up the hill, following her younger self and her family at an ambling pace.

Danse looked up at the sky, his stomach knotted as he realised what they were witnessing. He held a hand out to Preston, who laced their fingers together. The whole world glowed white.

…

“If I keep Shaun with me, then I’m the one murdered by Kellogg and Nate is the Sole Survivor,” Nora said. She stretched her arms above her head, her spine audibly popping. “If I refuse Vault-Tec’s offer, then we’re all killed in the initial blast. If we try to run away instead of going to the Vault, we’re all killed in the initial blast. No matter what I do, either we all die or Kellogg takes Shaun.”

Her voice was steady. Peaceful, even. “I got a few more minutes with my son than any other mother did. Nothing I did could have changed anything.”

The headset clicked and clattered to the floor.

“Fuck you Vault-Tec,” Danse muttered under his breath, and Preston choked on a laugh.

At the entrance to the Vault, the door slid aside to let them pass. The Nurse Handy floated serenely over to them.

“Congratulations,” she said. “If you choose to leave the vault, please take ten minutes to complete a survey on the terminal.”

 

…

Preston carried two beers across the parapet and set them on the table that looked over the central courtyard.

The Castle was still Nora's home of choice for the strange little Wasteland family she was building. The medical station was now staffed by a wide eyed woman who he sometimes caught staring at her own fingers with the open amazement of a newborn. Amongst the Castle's children could be found a strangely serious boy in a striped shirt, who Nora introduced as her ...son, always with the pause.

He supposed he and Danse counted in their number, too.

Ten feet below, Danse was a one man construction crew, hefting chunks of stone the size of a brahmin and fitting them together as easily as a child playing with blocks.

He looked up, sensing Preston’s eyes on him, and lifted a hand. Preston lifted the beers in response. Danse immediately dropped the block he was holding, sending dust pluming up around him, and headed up the stairs.

That night he fell asleep easily, as he so often did after a long day's labor, but woke up in the night to find Danse still awake, his breaths shallow and uneven.

“She saw it,” Danse whispered. “She saw the nukes go of. The apotheosis of an endless orgy of technological development. She watched first-hand while the inevitable consequences of unfettered ‘advancement’ played out. How can she have witnessed that and not think technology needs to be destroyed if it's a threat to humanity?”

This wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation, and it wouldn't be the last. And some nights it was Preston awake in the middle of the night, with frantic questions for Danse. Those nights were growing fewer, and their streaks of unbroken sleep were growing longer. But he doubted they would ever stop for good.

Preston rolled over, fitting their legs together and working his way as close to Danse as he could. “Nora made the right call when she persuaded you to live,” Preston said simply.

After a moment the tension drained out of Danse’s body. “Same to you,” he said.


End file.
